Sunday, February 26

We were booked to play St John's Tavern (on Junction Road in Archway) on a rainy weeknight sometime in 1989 and as we started the set I thought someone looked familiar in the audience. Of course, Mouse hadn't bothered to tell us that Ronnie Dawson would be coming along and would be joining us for an encore. We did 'Hillybilly Blues' with him and a couple of his other tunes. Someone videotaped the gig but I've never seen it.

Friday, February 24

As I sit here laying out issue 26, iTunes is on shuffle in the background. It's strange how certain songs pop up and immediately conjure up a feeling or a memory.

When Conrad asked for this song at the punk rock bar in Tokyo at some ungodly hour in the morning after many, many hours' enjoyment of Japan's frothiest beers, the place erupted. Suddenly a bunch of men of a certain age (and Dean) were taken back to their youth... and that bar is the closest I've experienced to a gig since the seventies.

Brilliant. If I go back to Japan this December, that bar – and great anthems like this – will be a must-do yet again on the itinerary.

I know I'm preaching to the converted, but what I really like about Tyler and Kyle at Lowbrow Customs is that their business has grown organically from their longtime love of motorcycles; they are not some johnny-come-lately scenesters who see their new-found motorcycling bros as a source of income (and believe me there are lots of businesses that fit that description out there.)

They also run a tight ship and have an enviable business ethos: they treat their customers right, don't rip them off and package everything beautifully. Oh, and they are nice guys to boot.

OK, ad over.

During the recent snowy weather, I sat down to a couple of Lowbrow-produced DVDs... the Salt Ghost and the EDR. Both are very watchable, but the EDR film particularly made me yearn for sunny days, long rides and beers with good friends. Even better, I kept spotting familiar faces... Sumo, Walter, Tyler, Jimmy, Caleb, Jeff O, Bill & McGoo... as well as my old tanks on Tyler's Panhead! It's nicely shot, narrated and edited... and is well worth whatever it costs to get it to your door.

I'd been taking photos for the GK website with my trusty (and huge) FujiFilm FinePix 4700 since around 2000, but when I decided to go into print I thought I'd better invest in a 'proper' camera, and bought a Canon 400D.

I flew down to Geelong and shot Buzz and his handbuilt Triumph for the first issue. Five years ago this month.

Terry says: "Was diggin' deep and found my first chopper mag. I was still pedaling my 1963 JC Higgins bicycle – that I hung apes and a tiger print banana seat on – when I bought this from the corner drug store. I knew I was onto something. I thought that Triumph was the shit!".

You won't get a fresher-from-the-barn 45 than this... or a more authentic krusty kustom.

It was discovered at the back of a chicken coop on a smallholding in Arizona and has an interesting history; it was apparently abandoned by a film company after being used as a prop in the 1967 biker flick 'Barbarians from Beyond'. The owner of the smallholding used it for a while until the early seventies, during which time it appeared in a couple of other bikexploitation movies including 'The Pillagers' (starring a young Harvey Keitel) and 'Bend Me Over Easy, Baby'. When the bike's generator went south in '72, it was loaned to a bar in Phoenix to hang from the ceiling and was finally put to rest in the chicken coop on its return to the owner in '77.

If you have the curent issue, you will have read the feature on Mike Bennett and Terry Godschalk's '37 big-inch flatheads.

I had first seen one of Mike Bennett's bikes in Iron Horse magazine in the mid-nineties, and the style of bikes he was building made a huge impression on me. But I had never made the connection between his friend Terry and this Panhead (above) until Terry sent me scans from issue 158 of Iron Horse. It's him! This bike was also a huge influence on me... as you can, ahem, see.

I continue to be amazed by the series of coincidences that mean I am now talking to the men who built the bikes I was so influenced by in the past. Say what you want about the Internet, but it links like-minded people like nothing else.

Monday, February 13

Caleb's award-winning Panhead. This and Dave Barker's Knuck were my favourite bikes from last year. Very happy we've finally got a feature for the mag, shot for GKM by the totally top-notch Mark Kawakami.

Friday, February 10

Took a trip to see Benny at the new shop yesterday to finally photograph Zip's bikes. Lynn was there too, bunking off work!

The new place is very atmospheric and full of the usual array of cool metal in various stages of completion. The chicken poo flathead is particularly funky... with original, period-perfect US termites between the tanks.